Shabbat Across America/Canada -- sponsored by the National Jewish Out-reach Program, encouraging Conservative, Orthodox, Reform, and Reconstructionist Jews to observe the Sabbath from sundown tonight until sundown tomorrow

World's Largest Rattlesnake Roundup -- Sweetwater, TX, US (begins with a parade and "Miss Snake Charmer" pageant tonight, and continues with lots of fun through Sunday)

World Sleep Day -- sponsored by the World Association of Sleep Medicine, aiming to lessen the burdens of sleep problems on society; this year's theme is When Sleep is Sound, Health and Happiness Abound.

Twelfth recorded perihelion passage of Halley's Comet, 607Spanish explorer Cortez lands in Mexico, 1519The Spanish fleet occupies Djerba, at Tripoli, 1560Cambridge College is renamed Harvard for clergyman John Harvard, 1639Jews are denied the right to build a synagogue in New Amsterdam, 1656Massachusetts gains title to Maine for $6,000, 1677The twenty-seventh recorded perihelion passage of Halley's Comet, 1759William Herschel discovers Uranus, 1781The Uncle Sam cartoon figure makes its debut in the NY Lantern weekly, 1852The US Senate begins Pres Andrew Johnson's impeachment trial, 1868Oxford defeats Cambridge in their first golf match, 1878The Siege of Khartoum, Sudan begins, Madhist Sudanese against the Egyptian, British, and loyalist Sudanese forces, 1884In France the length of the workday for women and children is limited to 11 hours by law, 1900Mongolia (formerly Outer Mongolia) declares independence from China, 1921A law is passed in the US state of Tennessee prohibiting the teaching of evolution, 1925Clyde Tombaugh announces the discovery of Pluto at Lowell Observatory, 1930Rotaract begins as a youth program of Rotary International, 1968Apollo 9 returns safely to Earth after testing the Lunar Module, 1969The Seikan Tunnel, the longest undersea tunnel in the world, opens between Aomori and Hakodate, Japan, 1988India's Missionaries of Charity chooses Sister Nirmala to succeed Mother Teresa as its leader, 1997Gold prices on the New York Mercantile Exchange hit $1,000 per ounce for the first time, 2008A Harvard Medical School study claims that red meat increases the risk of death and has additional negative health implications, 2012In Greenland, the Siumut party wins the parliamentary election, setting up Aleqa Hammond to become the country's first female Prime Minister, 2013